


Midnight Craving

by TottWriter



Series: Shards of Reality [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Baking, M/M, Magical Realism, Pre-Relationship, previous unrequited crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 23:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13134273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TottWriter/pseuds/TottWriter
Summary: It's some time in the middle of the night when Kei gives in to his cravings and gets up to make cookies.He's not expecting what it leads to.





	Midnight Craving

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Haikyuu Writers' Secret Santa, as a pinch hit for [Musa!](musamortem.tumblr.com)
> 
> Huge thanks to [Remmy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remembrance) and [quinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quinnlocke) for beta-reading and helping me push past the blocks I had.

It’s some time in the middle of the night when Kei finally concedes that his insomnia isn’t going to let up. Or, rather more accurately, that’s the point at which he decides that anything has to be better than lying awake in bed; tossing and turning unable to find a position half so comfortable as the one he’d been in the _first_ time he’d laid down. Before his phone had rung. Even as he’d heaved his weary limbs from the bed, he’d known deep down that he ought to ignore it. Ignore and find out whoever it was in the morning.

It hadn’t even been important. Just an automated message announcing that was he aware that he had won a Jackpot!! And all he needed to do to claim his prize was hand over his bank details to the unknown number which had called him about a prize draw he had never entered, and he’d get his prize (likely of identity theft) in five to seven days!

He’s still bitter about it as he throws on some clothes and fetches his glasses. Still grumbling as he shuffles into the kitchen in his slippers, filled with the sudden urge to _make_ something. He’s hungry, far more so than he was at the normal hour for eating. In fact, what he wants—more than is entirely reasonable, certainly—is a cookie. One of those large, puddle-like affairs which normally have chocolate chips in them—except he doesn’t have any chocolate chips, and anyway, he’s never actually liked chocolate chip _anything_ before. But the odd craving is there all the same, strong enough that he finds himself looking up recipes on his phone.

 _This is stupid_ , he acknowledges, rifling through the cupboard and noting that he’s got the wrong sort of flour. But there’s plenty of it at least, and he should probably use up the last of the butter _anyway_ , and really, how is making cookies at midnight any worse a decision than lying awake in bed _without_ cookies?

Kei has never been much of a baker. Which is something of an understatement, really: Kei has never baked anything in his life. He lives on a diet of simple to make, healthy food which can all be boiled, stir fried, or (when all else fails), heated up in the microwave. He eats well enough for a bachelor whose mother made him bentos every day up until he went to university, but he’s far from adventurous. What’s the point in trying, when he could just go to a bakery and buy it from someone who isn’t going to mess it up?

At midnight, of course—when he has a craving so strong he cannot explain it as anything other than a symptom of severe sleep deprivation—there are no bakeries open. Suddenly all the advantages of relying upon skilled craftsmen to supply him with confections have fallen to naught. Perhaps he ought to have looked into this baking lark sooner, because it would certainly have spared him his current panic as he lays out the ingredients he’s managed to cobble together, and wonders what exactly would work as a substitute for chocolate chips.

Still, although he harbours no false delusions that the recipe he managed to find on his phone will work _well_ (after all, he’s lacking about two thirds of the ingredients, and half the instructions read as total gibberish), at the end of it he ought to at least have something he can eat. It should tide him over until morning, at which point he can call upon the experts at the bakery down the road instead, the way nature intended.

Mixing together butter and sugar with a wooden spatula at hell-am in the morning, while peering down his nose at the instructions on his phone, is a rather surreal experience. He’d prefer it if his glasses were in the correct place, but with his fingers coated in what will hopefully become cookie dough there’s no way he’s going to touch them. It takes long enough to clean the lenses of _normal_ grime, let alone the sticky batter he’s concocted so far. Somehow, when he gets to the flour stage it all goes wrong anyway, and a cloud of the stuff billows up to obscure his vision even more.

On any other day, it just wouldn’t be worth it. He’d have conceded defeat long ago, round about when he realised he had no idea what the differences between the multiple listed varieties of sugar even _were_ , let alone actually owning them. But it’s a strange night, and really he’s got nothing better to do, even if this _will_ just become another anecdote to tell Yamaguchi—the one friend he has whose discretion he can usually trust.

Besides, the eventual dough he winds up with doesn’t look _that_ bad. It’s got rather uneven ‘chips’ thanks to his inexperience with chopping up bars of solid chocolate—which had been about a month out of date in any case—and it’s a lot stickier than he’d really been anticipating, but all in all he’s moderately satisfied with it.

As far as midnight craving cookies go, these have promise. He’s not expecting miracles or anything, but as the oven heats up (which according to the instructions was meant to be his first Act of Baking, but he was a little preoccupied with his sugar dilemma to worry about it at the time), he’s not stood there telling himself it’ll be a disaster.

The only oven tray he has which is suitable for baking on is too small to fit the entire batch of dough, given that he’s apparently meant to leave a large gap between each little lump of it to account for the puddling process.

 _It’s fine_ , he tells himself. The recipe states that the dough can be frozen—and he’s certainly seen it sold in ice-cream form often enough, so that has to be true. All he has to do is wrap the offending sticky mass of pre-cookies in something, and then stow it away in case they turn out to be edible and worth making more of.

His heavily amended recipe proclaims that cling wrap is ideal for this, but it’s the middle of the night and weariness is settling over him enough that he really can’t face the effort of messing around like that. One of those sandwich bags is good enough, sealed closed and labelled with a marker. Just in case he were to confuse it with some _other_ batch of midnight cookies.

The oven is hot enough for him to slip the tray in before he carries the labelled bag over to the freezer, yawning a little. If he’d started this whole ludicrous venture in the middle of the night, the morning must be wearing on by now.

Kei winces as he swings the little half-height freezer in his kitchen open. The light’s just too bright for his eyes, and—hold on. _What_ light?

He reaches out for the top drawer, and pulls it open, crying out with surprise as it collapses at the first touch of his fingers, crumbling into shards which dislodge the lower shelves. A tumble of ice and plastic shards pour out around his feet and he leaps back because holy shit that is _cold_.

The interior of his freezer is missing, replaced with what looks like an icy tunnel. There’s a light coming from somewhere inside it, but the air is full of the sort of misty fog he more generally associates with smoke machines, and it’s impossible to tell where it leads.

Kei slams the door shut, still clutching the bag of cookie dough in one hand. Only the scrunch of plastic and ice—meltwater already seeping into his socks—is enough to halfway convince him it might be real.

But that’s _impossible_ , really it is. There’s no way the contents of his freezer could mysteriously have been replaced by a passage into the unknown. Clearly he’s simply been awake for much longer than is good for him, and has started hallucinating. It’s the only explanation which makes even the remotest sense.

 _I probably shouldn’t be alone in this state,_ he thinks dully, setting the bag of dough down on the work surface. _If I’m having hallucinations this severe, someone ought to be on hand to supervise me in case they get worse._ He grabs his phone on autopilot, and finds himself running through names. Who can he call? Who’s actually _awake_ at this particularly antisocial time of night?

Yamaguchi is his first choice, naturally—he’s experienced enough of Kei’s insomnia-laced phone calls that he won’t be particularly surprised to hear that things have progressed to full-on hallucination. Then again, he _will_ worry regardless of that fact, and what Kei needs right now is someone who won’t fly off in a panic just because his brain has attempted to convince him that there’s a portal to the unknown in his freezer.

In fact, that requirement scratches a good number of names off the relatively short list of contacts he’s accumulated on his phone over the years. Enough that he finds himself starting at the name ‘Kuroo Tetsurou’ and actually considering it.

He hasn’t spoken to Kuroo in _years_. Not since High School in fact, when after unthinkingly mentioning that he was gay, the other man had also come out—in one of the most horrifically awkward and transparent attempts to hook up with him that Kei had ever had the misfortune to endure. Apparently Kuroo had felt the same, because he’d never attempted calling or messaging after that either.

Frankly, he can’t even be sure the number is still active—it exists on his phone purely because he’s always imported his contacts into new phones wholesale, and never bothered to go through them and prune out the old ones. Even if it is, there’s no guarantee Kuroo will answer. There’s no guarantee of anything, because the last time Kei spoke to him was more than five years ago and he _still_ hasn’t decided which of them was the most mortified by the end of that encounter.

No, it’s pointless. Kei doesn’t even know where Kuroo _lives_ , and even if by some strange statistical improbability he’s awake at—oh, it’s only half past three in the morning, he could have sworn it was later—that _still_ doesn’t mean he’ll be able or even willing to help. True, his last known whereabouts were Tokyo, which is where Kei has somehow ended up, but Tokyo is a large place. Phoning up someone you turned down for being a creep and asking them to come over in the middle of the night because you’re out of your mind is a sure recipe for disaster.

Almost as disastrous as making cookies at somewhere past midnight and then hallucinating that there’s a portal to… _something_ where the contents of your freezer ought to be, in fact.

Kei stares past the phone at his feet. They’re both freezing cold _and_ soaking wet, and if that isn’t a thoroughly detailed hallucination Kei doesn’t really know what is. When he looks up, the debris is still piled around the freezer door, gradually melting into a large puddle on the linoleum.

 _I need Yamaguchi for this_ , he thinks, so really he can only blame all the hours of sleep he hasn’t had for the fact that rather than going back to his contacts and picking the correct entry, he simply hits the call button and rings Kuroo instead.

 

* * *

 

Tetsurou is still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he hits the green button on his phone. He’s operating on reflexes alone at this point; groggy and disoriented as he lifts the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” Even _he_ can hardly understand himself thanks to the yawn which swallows the word, so whoever the hell is ringing stands no chance. “Who… damn, what time is _this?_ ”

No one answers for a few seconds, and then he hears a voice he honestly never figured on ever hearing again:

“ _Shit_.”

 

* * *

 

Kei has, realistically, half a second in which he could hang up and stand a reasonable chance of not getting a call back. He muffs it, too busy staring down at his sodden toes while a clatter on the other end of the line suggests that Kuroo has actually dropped his phone. Then again, he passed through tiredness and out the other side a while ago, so really all he can feel is mute resignation to his fate.

“Wait,” Kuroo’s voice says, bleary enough that it’s obvious he’s just been woken up by the call. “Wait is that… _Tsukki?_ ”

Kei opens his mouth to say it was a mistake, a misdial. To apologise for calling in the middle of the night and hang up then and there. No good can come of this conversation; it’s best ended before things get any worse. But that’s the moment he notices the faint glow at the bottom of the freezer, from the corner where the seal couldn’t properly close because of a plastic shard in the way.

“Just a quick question,” he says, tired enough that his brain-to-mouth filter is gone but alert enough to still be aware that he is going to _severely_ regret this at some point. “I actually didn’t mean to call you but I think I’m hallucinating and I needed to be sure it’s not too serious.”

“You called me in the middle of the night because of hallucinations?” From the sound of his voice Kuroo is slightly more awake now, and Kei really can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. “Is this some kind of joke? Are you drunk?”

“I’m not drunk,” Kei says flatly, because despite how this night is going he still has _some_ pride. He sighs. “I make a mistake. I’m going to hang u—”

“Wait! Wait just…you called me up out of the blue after all this time and it was just a _mistake?_ Seriously, what’s going on. I don’t remember you being a guy who just makes ‘mistakes’ like that. Something must be up.”

Kei sighs again, and really, he ought to just hang up. Hang up and possibly change his number for good measure, but dear _god_ his toes are cold, and he can still see the bit of a glow from the freezer, and the puddle on his kitchen floor really isn’t getting smaller and honestly the whole situation is so far removed from his comfort zone that he really can’t be held accountable for his misjudgements any more, because what he actually says is:

“If I send you a photo of my freezer, will you tell me what you see?”

“Your _freezer?_ Wha—I mean…sure, whatever. It’s only… _Jesus_ Tsukki it’s three in the morning!” Kuroo exclaims, voice still hoarse and rough from sleep. “What are you _doing?_ ”

“Hold on.”

There’s only one way to get this over with, and that’s to take the damn photo and sort this out once and for all. With his mind at rest he can go back to not sleeping, and Kuroo can go back to _actually_ sleeping—the lucky bastard—and in the morning Kei will make a trip to his local phone store to change his number and pretend none of this ever happened. Maybe his cookies will even be edible; who knows.

He can hear Kuroo still grumbling over the line as he switches to the camera function and edges round the icy puddle to open his freezer door. Hallucination or not, he can still _feel_ the cold if he stands in it. And no one has to see him edging around his kitchen for no reason at all.

The pathway is still there. It’s both a blessing and a curse, because while he would definitely like to say that it has gone and this was all a terrible misunderstanding, sorry to have disturbed your perfect night’s sleep, at least he still has something to take a picture _of_. There’s a validation in his actions, given how prolonged his delusions have been. Backing up a few paces (and leaning backwards over the work surface as well, because his kitchen really isn’t that large), he snaps a picture and slams the door closed again before sending it.

“What do you see,” he says flatly.

“Wait you _actually_ just sent me a photo of your…” Kuroo sighs, voice filled with weary resignation as he adds: “Hold on, let me get it up.” There are sounds of movement: Kuroo sitting up in bed, perhaps.

Kei is honestly too tired to imagine what sort of bed Kuroo has, and anyway, if he _had_ begun to wonder he wouldn’t have had much time to do so, because—

“What the _fuck?_ What am I even looking at—is this _shopped?_ Tsukki…you woke me up at three in the morning after five years to pull some kind of stupid prank? What the fuck.”

He can forgive Kuroo the insulting implications about his character (more or less), because frankly, if the situation had been reversed he would likely have assumed the same. More pressing is the fact that apparently _Kuroo can see it too_ . Which means that either he’s _also_ hallucinating this entire phone call, or somehow the whole disaster in front of him is actually real.

“I see,” he says aloud. “I’m sorry for troubling you.”

He hangs up. His hand is only shaking a little, and really that’s not too bad, all things considered.

 

* * *

 

Tetsurou stares at the phone in his hand, blinking sleepily at it as though Tsukishima _didn’t_ just cut off the call as abruptly as he’d rung. What exactly just happened?

Realistically, Tetsurou ought to go back to sleep. He’s just had the most surreal conversation of his entire year—hell, make that _several_ years—and it’s getting on for four in the morning, so what he needs to do is chalk it up to alcohol or worse on Tsukishima’s part, and try to salvage a little more rest before he has to get up again.

The trouble is, it might have been five years—time enough that he’s _mostly_ been able to put the whole godforsaken nightmare out of his mind for good—but he still _knows_ him. Or he knows the sort of person he always was, at least, and it’s asking a lot to really believe that he’s gone from a guy who was so generally… _upstanding_ in pretty much everything, to the sort of person who gets so drunk or high that he’s calling people on a whim to wind them up in the middle of the night.

Plus, he just can’t shake the weird note in Tsukishima’s voice as he’d apologised and abruptly hung up. Tetsurou might not have ever gotten to know Tsukishima all that well, but he’d learnt enough to know that he wasn’t easily rattled. And that short, curt apology had definitely sounded rattled.

 _Apparently I’m a masochist,_ he thinks dryly as he brings up the unfamiliar number—it’s changed since high school, because it’s not the same as the neglected one still marked ‘Tsukki!’ in his contacts list—and calls him back.

The call goes to voicemail. Damn. Apparently some things _do_ never change.

Rather than ring again—he remembers just how stubborn the bastard can be—he types out a message and sends it, hoping to break through that way:

_::Okay just answer already, will you? We both know I’m not gonna sleep until I find out what the hell is going on::_

He gives Tsukishima a full twenty seconds before ringing again, just to make sure he’s had time to read the message. Somehow it feels like a year, because apparently, talking to Tsukishima is all it takes to make him feel like an awkward teenager again. It’s an association he could really do without, if he’s honest.

The phone rings off the first and second times, but it’s not like that’s a surprise. He might not ever have gotten to know Tsukishima _enormously_ well, but he wasn’t blind. What kind of guy keeps playing volleyball for years despite not actually enjoying it for most of that time? The kind who has a stubborn streak a mile wide, that’s who.

He gets an answer towards the end of his third attempt, which is actually a bit of a relief. He’s already been called a creep by Tsukishima once, and time might have taken the sting off the comment but they’ve never managed to shake it entirely. Much as he’s fully prepared to play him at his own game, Tetsurou really doesn’t want to cross any boundaries.

“ _What_ ,” Tsukishima asks waspishly, his voice clipped and cold.

Tetsurou rolls his eyes. Five years apparently haven’t changed _that_ much of his personality. “Okay, so we got off on the wrong foot.” He clears his throat and adds: “Again.”

“What do you want,” comes the reply, sounding rather less annoyed and clipped than he’d been expecting, and a lot more tired and…something else. There’s a note in Tsukishima’s voice which he can’t place.

“I want to know what the hell is going on. Come on, you woke me up, you owe me that much.”

The ensuing silence drags on long enough that he has to check and make sure that Tsukishima hasn’t simply hung up on him again. At last, as he’s stifling a yawn and wondering if maybe he _should_ call it quits and try for more sleep, he hears an odd, wet scraping sound and a protracted sigh.

“I already told you,” is all Tsukishima says, but there’s none of the calm complacency about his voice which Tetsurou remembers.

The last time he saw Tsukishima he’d flatly announced that if Kuroo wanted to be a predatory creep then he could at least learn some subtlety, and while the colour of his cheeks and the speed at which he’d walked away had strongly suggested that he was not at all as comfortable as he’d prefer people to believe, there really hadn’t been anything in his _voice_ to give him away. It had been the same hard, clipped tone he always used when pushing people away from…well, whatever he wanted to push them away from, frankly.

 _It’s like he’s seen a ghost_ , Tetsurou thinks, and then remembers the photograph, the one which had _clearly_ been doctored, because that sort of shit is impossible. And okay, it’s one of the most impressive jobs he’s ever seen, but…but it can’t be _real_ or anything. That’d be…that’d be…

…Enough to shake you up so badly you call presumably the last person on earth you actually want to talk to, just by mistake?

He looks down at the phone in his hand, and brings up the photo once more. It…it’s pretty ridiculous, sure. A tiny icy passageway taken straight out of some arctic cave and dropped into a home freezer, with…with a puddle of melting ice and bits of plastic on the floor, and the tips of Tsukishima’s long, socked feet just visible at the bottom of the shot.

Sure, a lot of doctored pictures have a considerable level of attention to detail in them. But really, Tsukishima could find people _far_ more likely to buy them than he is, and anyway, the timestamp file name matches when it was supposedly taken _perfectly_ , and how could he have predicted how long the call would last?

“Okay so suppose I…I don’t _entirely_ disbelieve you,” Tetsurou says. “Why did—”

“Do you honestly think I sent you the photo expecting to be believed?” Tsukishima snaps, voice definitely straying into hysterical territory now. “You weren’t meant to actually be able to _see_ it! I’m hallucinating. This _isn’t happening._ ”

He sounds about thirty seconds away from a complete breakdown. Like he’s about to collapse then and there. It’s honestly the only excuse Tetsurou can make for the fact that the next words to come out of his mouth are:

“Where are you?”

 

* * *

 

It’s some time a little after four in the morning when Tetsurou pulls up outside a small apartment complex. He honestly can’t quite believe that after all these years, Tsukishima doesn’t even live all that far away. At least, not far away along traffic-free streets. It’d probably be something of a different matter during the daytime.

There are lights coming from a few windows on the third floor. It matches the directions he’s been given, which is always a relief. Even as he’d thrown on some clothes and locked up after himself, he’d had the brief thought that it _could_ all be a trick. Winding him up in the middle of the night and luring him out to a fake address just to mess with him—but no. That’s really not Tsukishima’s style. While they might have parted on less than fantastic terms (something of an understatement, but never mind that), things weren’t bad enough that he ought to have kept up the grudge this long.

It’s a cheap enough apartment block that there’s no buzzer to let him in automatically, but a tall, blond figure is waiting for him in the darkened hall when he gets there.

 _Wow_ , Tetsurou thinks. _He doesn’t look creepy stood there like that, not at_ all.

He’s taller. Well no kidding, stupid, of _course_ he’s taller. Tsukishima was only, what, sixteen when they saw each other last? Now he’s an adult—and long and lanky enough that he probably has to duck to go through a lot of doorways. _Damn_. It’s really not helping with the intimidation factor either, stood there statuesque with his glasses catching little flecks of streetlamps, and a haunted, grim expression on his face which is just about visible in the gloom. How long as he been stood there in the dark?

“You missed me that much you couldn’t wait, eh?” is what Tetsurou would _dearly_ love to say. He doesn’t, both because he values his own life too much, and because Tsukishima really doesn’t look in the mood for small talk. They walk in silence to the lift, and there’s light in there at least. It shows up the large bags under Tsukishima’s eyes. When was the last time he _slept?_

“You need to take better care of yourself,” are Tetsurou’s _actual_ first in-person words in five years, and by the expression on Tsukishima’s face, he might have been better off with the ones he didn’t say. If looks could kill he’d have been laid out then and there.

“Presumably if I were, this wouldn’t be happening.” There’s a pause. Beside Tsukishima’s head the number flickers as it indicates the change in floor. “…You’re right, then. That _would_ be preferable.”

It takes a bit of willpower, but Tetsurou doesn’t rise to the bait. Either this whole nonsense is actually real, in which case Tsukishima’s barbs are an attempt to keep himself together, or it’s the biggest setup to a practical joke of all time, in which case he _really_ doesn’t want to give him a reaction.

And maybe it’s a little uncharitable to be having that kind of thought about the person he’s just hauled himself out of bed and partway across town in the middle of the night for, but it’s not as though this particular situation is even remotely normal. Frankly, _anything_ could be going on.

Apparently the same thought has occurred to Tsukishima, because he stops in his tracks outside the door to what is presumably his apartment and rubs his temples with one hand, tilting his face down so he can reach over the top of his glasses.

“Right,” he says, sighing and shaking his head. “Let’s get this over with and see how crazy I am, I suppose.”

 

* * *

 

If Kei is honest with himself, he’s more than half expecting the freezer to be back to normal when Tetsurou follows him into his apartment. He’s not _entirely_ convinced he’s even awake: perhaps the whole thing from start to finish is just the byproduct of his subconscious finally getting a substantial amount of rest. It would certainly make matters a lot simpler if he could just open his eyes and miraculously have fallen asleep for once.

But clearly that’s just wishful thinking, because as he walks into the kitchen again he’s greeted by both the smell of freshly baked cookies and the sight of the pile of towels he’d heaped up around the freezer while he was waiting. The second batch (which he’d shoved into the oven in the absence of any better ideas of what to do with the dough) are still steaming on the cooling rack.

“You often stay up all night baking then?” Kuroo asks, eyebrow raised as he looks around. “Still, you got a nice place here. Are you working already? You never did tell me how you ended up in Tokyo.”

Kei ignores him, pursing his lips as he walks over to the freezer. He’d rather get this whole disaster over with, because either he’s about to make an utter fool of himself or confirm the impossible fact that there’s a… _something_ in his freezer instead of what ought to be there, and he still can’t decide which option is worse.

His hand stops on the freezer door’s handle. Idly, he acknowledges that he must be painting rather a ridiculous figure: stood there bent almost double, with one arm outstretched and a pained expression on his face. But he can’t bring himself to care; can’t bring himself to grab hold and _pull_ , because this is about the moment he ought to be waking up if he _has_ been granted the reprieve of it being a dream, and so far he’s still very much stood in his kitchen about to make himself look like a complete idiot because there’s no way that… that…magical portals to mystical dimensions appear inside ordinary kitchen freezers. They don’t appear _anywhere_ , for that matter, but even if they did, they’d turn up in more rational places than this.

It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid. It’s the exact kind of nonsense he would expect from a dream, which…actually is slightly reassuring. It’s a dream. He’s about to wake up. None of this is happening. There’s nothing to fear. He’ll open the door and that will be the moment he wakes up, because that’s exactly how those dreams always work, right? You can never quite do the same trick twice, especially if you have an audience, which is what his subconscious has in fact conjured up for him.

“Hey, Tsukki,” comes the voice which shatters that happy delusion. “Just…just open it, okay? I’m not coping well with this suspense.”

He glares at Kuroo. “I’m sorry, but when was the last time _you_ found yourself displaying the contents of your freezer to unexpected guests at four in the morning?” he snaps, and then, seeing where Kuroo’s eyes keep darting, adds: “You might as well eat one.. They’re the cause of this whole mess anyway.” _And they might not even taste any good, so feel free to be my guinea pig,_ he doesn’t add.

Kuroo gives him a Look.

“ _Cookies_ made a magical pathway appear in your freezer?”

“I wouldn’t have been anywhere near my freezer if I hadn’t been about to put the dough from the second batch in there,” Kei says flatly. “I bagged it up and walked over and opened up the freezer and—”

He pulls the door open as he speaks, words failing him as he’s confronted with the same bright light and misty interior as before. A few shards of ice tinkle as they fall out of the freezer onto the floor.

“ _…that_ ,” he finishes weakly, stepping as far back as he can.

Kuroo says nothing. When Kei chances a look, he’s frozen with a cookie halfway to his mouth, gaping like a complete idiot. Well, there are some perks to this fever dream at least, and one of them appears to be that he was mistaken about who would come out of this with the least amount of dignity left intact.

“How…how far does it _go?_ ” Kuroo manages at last

Kei stares at him, sure he must have misheard. “Excuse me?”

“How deep is it?” Kuroo asks, setting the cookie back down on the work surface and walking over.

This close Kei can smell him, just as he could in the lift: an ambiguously spicy scent he associates with a brand of deodorant he’s never bothered to identify. Under the harsher kitchen lights Kei can see the faint bags beneath Kuroo eyes, and the beginnings of stubble along his jawline where he didn’t stop to shave before coming over. Kuroo’s tired— _obviously_ he’s tired—but he’s not complaining. Hardly flinching in fact, despite the fact that reality itself appears to have come unglued around them.

 _He’s far too real to be a dream,_ Kei thinks, glad that Kuroo’s attention is on the icy passage into the unknown, and not the fact he’s being stared at.

Kuroo reaches out with one arm as he kneels down, leaning forward and bracing himself on the counter for balance. He pats the inside of the passage gingerly, running his fingers over the ice.

“Well it’s definitely still a freezer,” he remarks as he draws his hand back. It’s red with the cold and dripping wet. “Honestly I…if I weren’t seeing it with my own two eyes I wouldn’t believe it. What do you plan on doing?”

Kei stares at him. “I want it to go _away_ ,” he says flatly. What else would anyone hope for? “I want it to go away so that I can eat my substandard creations in peace, and then perhaps get an hour or so of sleep before I wake up again and get some _better_ ones, because none of this was meant to happen, and honestly if there were a midnight cookie service I wouldn’t be in this mess at all. Baking at midnight was the worst idea I have ever had.”

Kuroo glances over at the cookies, and raises an eyebrow. “Well, I have to say, I disagree with you there,” he says, getting to his feet. “I mean, this is…this is the sort of thing people _dream_ about. You walked into an adventure, and now you’re wishing it away? Haven’t you…haven’t you ever wanted to just do something wild and crazy?”

There’s a short silence in which Kei tries and fails to think of any kind of response. Did Kuroo manage to forget _everything_ about the kind of person he is over the last few years? Because that seems the only possible explanation for what’s happening in front of him right now.

“I gotta say,” Kuroo goes on, for all the world as if this sort of highkey ridiculous situation happens to him all the time: “Much as I am _ridiculously_ tired right now, I’m glad you called. Maybe it’s fate, you know? You wake up, decide to do something a little out of the ordinary, and that’s your ticket. That’s your chance. Don’t you want to find out what’s on the other side of that thing? I mean, what’s stopping you from going? Hell, I’m tempted to go myself, I know that. When will you ever get the chance to do something this impossible again?”

“I don’t need to do impossible things,” Kei says, but there’s something about the wistful look in Kuroo’s eyes which make his own words feel a little hollow. It’s not that he’s been stuck in a _rut_ , exactly, but there’s no denying that his life has been a lot more staid and sensible over the last few years. Ever since starting university, there’s been considerably more work, and far less time for the things he really enjoys. Even for the things he _didn’t_ enjoy, but which nonetheless broke up the monotony a bit.

“Stop worrying about only doing the bare minimum you _need_ , and spend a little more time on what you _want_ ,” Kuroo says, like he’s just rifled through Kei’s thoughts and found the crux of a dilemma which has been building for…how long, exactly? Far longer than it had any right to, that’s for sure. “Just how big is the stick up your ass that all this is happening right here in your kitchen and you want it to be _gone?_ ”

Oh. Well, Kuroo can kiss goodbye to that smidgen of goodwill he’d just managed to earn then.

“Please leave now,” Kei says, forcing his expression to flatten out and mask the little voice in the back of his head which hates, _hates_ that Kuroo might actually have something of a point.

“ _Leave?_ You called me up in the middle of the night and got me involved in it all, and now you just…”

Kuroo stands up straighter, and at his full height he might be half a head shorter than Kei, but he’s obviously been keeping in better shape because he’s a _lot_ broader. Even beneath his clothes Kei can see the vague shape of the other man’s biceps.

“You can’t make me pass this up, Tsukki,” he says softly. The eyebags and stubble are no less present on his face, but as he speaks they seem to fade away from Kei’s notice a little. “That…tunnel goes back further than the freezer should—did you even realise? Listen, I’m not here to make this weird. I just can’t understand how you can be right there and…and not react!”

“I do my best not to,” Kei says. “It doesn’t serve any purpose getting—”

“Of course it does!” Kuroo snaps. “People aren’t mind readers, Tsukki. How’s anyone supposed to know what’s going on if you never clue them in? And now you’re stood there just blankly denying that you’ve got basically the find of the century or longer in your kitchen? Hell, hang the cold—if that’d been me, the first thing I’d have done would be to crawl in and take a look!”

Kei swallows. “And if it doesn’t end? Or…or if it does go _somewhere_ , then what?” This is crazy. He’s not _actually_ considering it, is he? He’s got responsibilities—there’s laundry to do, and he hasn’t finished clearing the kitchen away, and you can’t just take off into small passageways in the middle of the night without even making a plan—

“So back up, pack some things and take a longer look!” Kuroo says, flinging his hands in the air. There’s a light in his expression which shines out past the weariness. It’s infectious in a way Kei wishes he could ignore. “Grab a pair of gloves or something. You got a hat kicking around? Hell, you can even leave a note if you want, but take the hint, because there’s no way this didn’t happen for a reason.”

Kei glances down at the freezer, and then over at the digital clock on the oven door. He gives himself a good two minutes to think it over, mulling on all the possible outcomes he can think of.

Kuroo stays mercifully silent, only moving to pick up the cookie he had set aside, but Kei can tell it’s a struggle for the other man. Unspoken words practically hover in the air between them.

“So do you have any other _excellent_ advice?” Kei says at last, doing his best to keep his voice dry and clipped. It’s a poor effort, he can tell that much. “What is it you want to say now?”

Kuroo smiles; a gentle, almost wistful look settling onto his face. “I had a question, actually,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Will you let me come too?”

 

* * *

 

It’s some time a little before dawn when two men stand next to each other in the kitchen of a small Toyko apartment, dressed for cold weather with bulging rucksacks slung over a shoulder apiece. Their contents have been raided from cupboards—clothes, toiletries, food of varying kinds.

“We taking the cookies?” one asks, gesturing to a sealed food bag on the counter. “They’re not bad, you know.”

“Might as well,” the other replies with a shrug. “If we’ve room. It’s thanks to them this is happening, after all.”

And then, because they are who they are, he adds: “You can go first, Kuroo. If we’re crawling through that for an unknown length of time, you will _not_ be staring at my ass the whole way.”

“Are you saying you want— You know what, never mind. Let’s go.”

The sun comes up on an empty kitchen, a little while later. There’s a note left on the kitchen counter though, in neat but hurried writing:

_~If you’re reading this Yamaguchi, we’re not back yet. Hopefully the tunnel is still there. If not…I copied out the recipe and you could try to repeat what happened. Wait until you get a midnight craving.~_

 

**Author's Note:**

> (He doesn't regret it.)


End file.
